Email: Devil’s Third

It. Looks. Great. It looks like the combination of Gunz the Duel and the Mercenaries mode of Resident Evil. Good, fast action. You’ll switch between guns and swords in a complex environments.

^ That sounds like an ad but it isn’t. You normally don’t get games with a good premise and hopefully super solid gameplay on Nintendo systems – at least not one with a good core story. Even on Sony and Microsoft systems, the focus would be on the graphics of the violence being the core reward instead of the actual playing. Goldeneye did this, so did Perfect Dark. They had blood and violence but the technical play aspects, everything player controlled, had the most attention.

It also uses a bit of underused science/scifi for the story. Apparently space debris is so great that the collisions keep multiplying. This causes mankind to become grounded and to eventually lose all its satellites. Thus, was breaks out. It’s semi futuristic but still grounded in the past a bit due to the loss of that tech. Of course, everyone decides to go to war.

That’s enough to make a good series of movies and books, but by making it the source of a third person shooter… it can be very good. The videos make it seem promising. Valhalla Studios is behind this, it’ll be their first game but the head of it helped lead teams in creating Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive. He also left Team Ninja before Other M came into existence. Nintendo is footing the bill but I don’t see any signs of maternal instincts, brotherly love, puzzles, etc coming in to mess with the original premise.

I still have my Game Cube and was starting to think you would stop releasing games for the console. Thank you for supporting it through all those years.

When I saw it, I immediately wondered if this was Red Steel 3. The protagonist looks like a POS. Everything in this game looks boring. Why would anyone buy this game?

Why can’t Nintendo get an exclusive with a Western developer? Is the Wii U going to be nothing but a Japanese-Pride-Parade?

What I liked best about the NES is that it dumped the ‘Japanese pride’ and tailored its games and hardware for everyone. If Devil’s Third was designed by a westerner, I doubt Nintendo would even remotely consider it.

The company says they want Devil’s Third to be a trilogy. That is an indicator that this game is going to BOMB HARD. Malstrom Rule: Talk of sequel or trilogy before the first game has even launched means the game is going to be a disaster. Good game design is designing your current game as if it’s your last. Bad game design is designing your current game as if there are multiple sequels ahead.

Always design your game as if it will be your last. One day, you will right.

Update: Imagine how much better Starcraft 2 would be if it was designed without the ‘trilogy’. Or Diablo 3.